Chapter 1030: Chapter 1030 - Taming Protocol, Again
Larissa looked at Ren when he came in.
"You’re two minutes late."
"Liu kept me."
"Liu always keeps you..."
They were alone.
Ren had the theory that the absence of an audience was more convenient for Larissa than for him in these sessions, but he had never found the right moment to raise it without the moment becoming a different kind of conversation.
When they had started this a few days ago, he had assumed they would have difficulty not feeling embarrassed about practicing for what was essentially the official promise that they would be getting married, but she had gone straight to the point the moment the door closed even the first day.
"The betrothal ceremony has three phases," Larissa had said, indicating the first document. "The formal presentation, which is where you speak less than your instinct is going to ask you to. The declaration of intent, which has a specific formula you need to memorize because improvising in that moment is the equivalent of insulting every important old family present. And the exchange of seals, which is ceremonial but where each gesture has a registered meaning you will need to execute correctly."
Ren had underestimated how much she wanted this.
Larissa had even convinced Luna and Liora to let her teach Ren alone with a simple argument: on the day of the betrothal, he would surprise them more with what he had learned this way.
She hadn’t elaborated further. She hadn’t needed to, because Luna and Liora had enough judgment to know that when Larissa said something with that calm, the elaboration was a useless detail and the statement was the point.
What she hadn’t told them was the real reason.
That Ren in learning mode gave her very interesting moments.
The problem of memorizing the steps was the same problem it always was. Ren’s perfectionist body did what it did when you gave it inefficient positions: the steps arrived at the wrong angle, the gestures had the right intention but the execution was so stoic that a marionette would have done it more naturally.
The kind of awkwardness that produced in Larissa an impulse she found difficult to contain.
But the easy solution still existed.
The Mantis.
A partial fusion, light enough to be nearly invisible to anyone who didn’t know to look for it, that handed the task of translating intention into movement with the beast’s system.
The Mantis was speed, precision and angle... and when Ren gave her the objective of copying exactly what Larissa’s body was doing, she copied it with the accuracy of something that processed geometry rather than feelings.
Clean and automatic.
But the interesting moments weren’t those. They were the ones that emerged when she gave Ren the gestures and the lines to memorize.
The result was an entirely different Ren from the usual one.
Confident and exact, with a physical presence and a consistency that her conscious mind would have interrupted with doubts and adjustments if she hadn’t been willing to simply let the fantasy exist without questioning it.
He was like a gallant protocol knight, but one who wasn’t performing, only executing that same perfect fantasy with complete sincerity.
A Ren who didn’t know he was doing something remarkable, which was what made it remarkable.
Larissa liked this version of Ren in ways she preferred not to catalog too specifically.
She liked teaching him alone because Ren in focused mode responded to directions with a precision that no other tamer in the world could have matched, and because conversations in that state had a particular quality where he listened and responded without the filters that normally processed his answers before they arrived.
It was, in certain respects, the most honest version of Ren that Larissa knew.
♢♢♢♢
"The exchange of seals," said Larissa, indicating the third document. "The complete sequence has seven steps. The first three are pure presentation of rank. The last four are where most betrothed parties make mistakes because the nerves arrive at exactly that point, after the first part has gone well."
Ren looked at the sequence.
The partial Mantis fusion was perceptible to someone who knew him, something in the posture that was slightly quieter than his usual one, an economy of movement that wasn’t studied but automatic, the body doing less without being asked because the beast’s precision occupied the space that uncertainty normally used.
"Step four," Larissa continued, demonstrating the hand position, "is the one with the most significance. If you execute it incorrectly it reads as an implicit rejection of the alliance even when the intention was the opposite. The old families will register it before you’ve finished the movement."
Ren mirrored the position.
Perfect.
Larissa checked it from the angle that mattered.
"Good." She marked something on the document. "Have you reviewed what Finch sent you about the noble inventory in the eastern Goldcrest sector?"
"Not yet." Ren held the position while answering, the Mantis not caring about parallel conversations. "I have three weeks of reports unread from half the Goldcrest territory, two from the noble complaints in the northern sector, and one from Wei about the wall condition in the fourth stretch." A pause. "Someone should be able to make the operational decisions without needing me to sign off on everything."
"You always have to give the final approval." Not a reprimand exactly, but with the firmness of someone repeating something they have said before and consider fundamental enough that repetition is part of the teaching. "No matter how much you trust Wei or Finch. Trust doesn’t replace oversight when the consequences of an error fall on you at the scale that yours do."
Ren exhaled through his nose. "I know... I’m just saying they make fewer mistakes than I would and I could be doing less bureaucratic things and more stuff that needs my power or other special capabilities."
"Next step," said Larissa.
Ren returned to focused mode and executed step five.
♢♢♢♢
The politics of the betrothal were, in practical terms, considerably simpler than they would have been without the altercation having effectively eliminated the competition.
Orion’s faction had survived the post-war period in the state in which structures survived when the element sustaining them disappeared suddenly and they didn’t fully collapse... Barely functional.
